The government shelves its HE Bill after 2 years of mass protest: the fight goes on

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Today, it has been reliably reported that the government is shelving its Higher Education Bill for a number of years. Reports show that it will wait for years to be published – and if the student movement has anything to do with it, it never will be.

Why? Because the government doesn’t want to be “facing battles” over it. In other words, because after two years of mass mobilisation, the Coalition government does not want to risk further unrest among students and academics.

Having delayed or abandoned part of their programme, the government will now seek to continue with much of its higher education White Paper without primary legislation, pushing it through backrooms rather than subjecting it to democratic scrutiny. They hope that we will be pacified by this partial victory. But we will keep fighting until the whole of the white paper, and fees, are history – and we know that our tactics are effective.

Over the past two years, the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts has pursued a strategy of repeated national demonstrations, local protests and direct action, and support for staff in strike action.  2010 saw mobilisations of 50,000 on the NUS/UCU demo, followed by over 100,000 on the NCAFC day of action, and then a massive wave of campus occupations. On November 9th, the NCAFC mobilised 10,000 students to march through London, with barely any resources, and in face of major threats of police violence, specifically under the banner of defeating the HE white paper. 

None of this is to say that the battle is over: the campaign for public education, accessible to all, is only just beginning. But know we know that we are capable of winning, and that it was mass mobilisation and standing by our principles that got us this far.